Yes, well, in this way artistic horror passes on to silliness . . . which is what en passant I wished to prove.
And to this indeed one would come by condemning prematurely an author who wished to prepare you gradually for his catastrophe, without having recourse to these shrieking colours.
Yet the danger on the opposite side is even greater. You despise the efforts of a coarse literature which holds that it must storm your feelings with gross weapons, but . . . if the author goes to the other extreme, if he offends by too much digression from his main theme, by too much brush-mannerism, then your anger is greater still, and rightly so! For then he bores you, and this is unpardonable.
When you and I are walking together, and you keep straying from the road and calling me into the thicket, with the sole object of lengthening our walk, I naturally think this disagreeable, and make up my mind that next time I will go by myself. But if you are able to show me a plant in the thicket which I did not know before, or about which you point out to me something that had hitherto escaped my notice . . . if from time to time you take me to a flower which I am tempted to pick and wear in my buttonhole, then I forgive you these digressions from the road; indeed, they fill me with gratitude.
And even without flower or plant, as soon as you call me aside to show me through an opening in the trees the path that presently we shall be treading, but that still lies in front of us in the depth of distance, and winds down below like a scarce perceptible line through the field yonder . . . then also I do not take your digression amiss. For when at last we shall have gone so far, I shall then know how our road has meandered through the mountains, what it is that has caused the sun, just now yonder, to have since come round to the left of us, why that hill is now behind us whose top we previously saw in front of us . . . see, then your digression has made it possible for me to understand the nature of my walk, and understanding is joy.
